Variations played out all through Europe. The governments of the three Benelux countries—Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg—initially bought a 49% share in Fortis NV within their respective countries for $16.6 billion, though Belgium later sold most of its shares and The Netherlands nationalized the bank’s Dutch holdings. Germany’s federal government rescued a series of state-owned banks and approved a $10.9 billion recapitalization of Commerzbank. In the banking centre of Switzerland, the government took a 9% ownership stake in UBS. Credit Suisse declined an offer of government aid and, going the way of Barclays, raised funds instead from the government of Qatar and private investors.
The most spectacular troubles broke out in the far corners of Europe. In Greece street riots in December reflected, among other things, anger with economic stagnation. Iceland found itself essentially bankrupt, with Hungary and Latvia moving in the same direction. Iceland’s three largest banks, privatized in the early 1990s, had grown too large for their own good, with assets worth 10 times the entire country’s annual economic output. When the global crisis reached Iceland in October, the three banks collapsed under their own weight. The national government managed to take over their domestic branches, but it could not afford their foreign ones
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